The New Yorker Stories

“What?”

“What you just said—about my daddy.”

“I am your daddy,” I say.

“I know it,” she says.

There seems nowhere for the conversation to go.

“You want to hear that story now?” I ask.

“No. Don’t try to tell me any stories. I’m ten.”

“I’m thirty-two,” I say.

My father’s brother William is about to score a victory over Elizabeth. He puts his foot on the ball, which is touching hers, and knocks her ball down the hill. He pretends he has knocked it an immense distance and cups his hand over his brow to squint after it. William’s wife will not play croquet; she sits on the grass and frowns. She is a dead ringer for the woman behind the cash register in Edward Hopper’s Tables for Ladies.

“How’s it going?” Danielle asks, standing in the doorway.

“Come on in,” I say.

“I just came upstairs to go to the bathroom. The cook is in the one downstairs.”

She comes in and looks out the window.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” she says. “Food?”

“You’re just being nice to me because I kiss your piggies.”

“You’re horrible,” she says.

“I tried to be nice to Lorna, and all she wanted to talk about was money.”

“All they talk about down there is money,” she says.

She leaves and then comes back with her hair combed and her mouth pink again.

“What do you think of William’s wife?” I ask.

“I don’t know, she doesn’t say much.” Danielle sits on the floor, with her chin on her knees. “Everybody always says that people who only say a few dumb things are sweet.”

“What dumb things has she said?” I say.

“She said, ‘Such a beautiful day,’ and looked at the sky.”

“You shouldn’t be hanging out with these people, Danielle,” I say.

“I’ve got to go back,” she says.

Banks is here. He is sitting next to me as it gets dark. I am watching Danielle out on the lawn. She has a red shawl that she winds around her shoulders. She looks tired and elegant. My father has been drinking all afternoon. “Get the hell down here!” he hollered to me a little while ago. My mother rushed up to him to say that I had a student with me. He backed down. Lorna came up and brought us two dishes of peach ice cream (handmade by Rosie), giving the larger one to Banks. She and Banks discussed The Hobbit briefly. Banks kept apologizing to me for not leaving, but said he was too strung out to drive. He went into the bathroom and smoked a joint and came back and sat down and rolled his head from side to side. “You make sense,” Banks says now, and I am flattered until I realize that I have not been talking for a long time.

“It’s too bad it’s so dark,” I say. “That woman down there in the black dress looks just like somebody in an Edward Hopper painting. You’d recognize her.”

“Nah,” Banks says, head swaying. “Everything’s basically different. I get so tired of examining things and finding out they’re different. This crappy nature poem isn’t at all like that crappy nature poem. That’s what I mean,” Banks says.

“Do you remember your accident?” he says.

“No,” I say.

“Excuse me,” Banks says.

“I remember thinking of Jules and Jim.”

“Where she drove off the cliff ?” Banks says, very excited.

“Umm.”

“When did you think that?”

“As it was happening.”

“Wow,” Banks says. “I wonder if anybody else flashed on that before you?”

“I couldn’t say.”

Banks sips his iced gin. “What do you think of me as an artist?” he says.

“You’re very good, Banks.”

It begins to get cooler. A breeze blows the curtains toward us.

“I had a dream that I was a raccoon,” Banks says. “I kept trying to look over my back to count the rings of my